The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu ta ch'i-shu

The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu ta ch'i-shu

by Andrew H. Plaks
The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu ta ch'i-shu

The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel: Ssu ta ch'i-shu

by Andrew H. Plaks

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Overview

Andrew Plaks reinterprets the great texts of Chinese fiction known as the "Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel" (ssu ta ch'i-shu). Arguing that these are far more than collections of popular narratives, Professor Plaks shows that their fullest recensions represent a sophisticated new genre of Chinese prose fiction arising in the late Ming dynasty, especially in the sixteenth century. He then analyzes these radical transformations of prior source materials, which reflect the values and intellectual concerns of the literati of the period.

Originally published in 1987.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691628202
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 12/08/2015
Series: Princeton Legacy Library , #2095
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 612
Product dimensions: 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.40(d)

Read an Excerpt

The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel

Ssu ta ch'i-shu


By Andrew H. Plaks

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1987 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-06708-7



CHAPTER 1

The Literati Novel: Historical Background


During the hundred-odd years from the Hung-chih [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] period (1488–1505) until about halfway through the Wan-li [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] reign (1573–1619) — a span of time that roughly corresponds to the sixteenth century by Western reckoning, four of the most beloved works of traditional Chinese fiction came into circulation in their most fully developed forms. These four texts — the San-kuo chih t'ung-su yen-i [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Chung-i shui-hu chuan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], Hsi-yu chi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Chin P'ing Mei tzu-hua [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] — are, with certain later modifications, essentially the same books as those that are known by those titles and read today. As we shall see in the detailed analysis of each of these works that comprises the substance of this study, none of these sixteenth-century editions is an entirely original literary creation. Rather, each represents the culmination of a long prior and subsequent history of source materials, antecedent narratives, and alternate recensions. Yet my principal thesis here will be that in each case the sixteenth-century text we have represents the most significant phase of this process of evolution, the one that puts the final stamp on the process and raises the respective narrative materials to the level of self-conscious artistic constructs. With this in mind, my discussions here will proceed on the supposition that it is these particular editions we should subject to the most thorough critical scrutiny and interpretation, while leaving the other versions of these narratives as simply documents in the historical development of Chinese fiction.

Once these four recensions were in place, they immediately came to function as models for the subsequent development of full-length hsiao-shuo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] fiction, what is today commonly called the traditional Chinese "novel." In fact, I could go one step further and state that it was precisely these texts that defined and shaped the generic outlines of the serious novel form in Ming and Ch'ing China. This crucial position of the four works as fountainheads of the genre is somewhat obscured by their very preeminence, since few if any other examples of the genre come close to their level of richness and sophistication. And so they stand apart as a class among themselves, a special set of masterworks that was not equaled for nearly 150 years, when they were joined by Ju-lin wai-shih [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Hung-lou meng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to form the so-called "six classic novels."

Even before the addition of the latter two masterworks in the eighteenth century, however, the special status of the earlier four was granted due recognition. For example, Li Chih [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] listed Shui-hu chuan among what he called the "five great literary texts" (wu ta pu wen-chang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), as did Chin Sheng-t'an [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] within his list of the "six works of genius" (liu ts'ai-tzu shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). By the early Ch'ing, book publishers were regularly advertising editions of the four novels as "masterworks" (ch'i-shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and even when the same terms came to be applied fairly indiscriminately to lesser works, they continued to carry the implication that the original four set the standard against which all comparable works must be measured. Eventually the expression "four masterworks" (ssu ta ch'i-shu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) became something of a set term. I am not certain precisely when this expression was coined, but at least as early as the seventeenth century it was used by Liu T'ing-chi in his Tsai-yüan tsa-chih, as well as in a preface to a commentary edition of San-kuo chih yen-i attributed to Li Yü [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (which ascribes the coining of the term to Feng Meng-lung [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), among other places. By the Ch'ien-lung [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] period, it appears to have been used as the title of a set of the four novels reportedly issued in the name of the same Chieh-tzu yüan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] publishing house originally associated with Li Yü, and since that time it has come down to us as a fairly common designation.

In proposing that it is these sixteenth-century editions of the four masterworks, rather than their earlier or later forms, that deserve the primary credit for transforming their respective narrative and textual traditions into literary monuments, I will have to pursue several lines of argumentation. First, I will review the evidence to attempt to show, in each chapter, that these particular recensions represent a significant advance over their hypothetical or extant antecedents. Next, I will provide a thorough structural and rhetorical analysis of the texts to demonstrate the degree of intricacy and artistic sophistication that goes into their composition. Once this groundwork has been set down, I will then turn to an extensive close reading and interpretation of the works, trying to relate this interpretation to some of the specific intellectual currents of the time.

Before I plunge into this task, however, it may be helpful to place these discussions in a broader context by speculating as far as possible on the question of why it was precisely at this moment in history that full-length Chinese narrative fiction reached this degree of maturity. There is obviously no reason, other than convenience, to cling to the imported time frame of the century — any more than that the conventional Chinese periodization by reign periods, for that matter, must necessarily mark out significant chunks of cultural history. One could just as well opt for a looser designation of the period in question as simply "late Ming," or, alternatively, one could narrow that focus to particular generations, as has recently been suggested. On the other hand, one might prefer to look beyond the border of the Ming-Ch'ing transition to the swath of cultural history from, say, 1500 to 1750 as a more meaningful frame of reference. Nevertheless, I will attempt to show in this introductory chapter that the period within and around the hundred years from 1500 to 1600, which sits astride the circulation of the four masterworks, happens to take in marked developments in a wide variety of fields, so that in this case at least the unlikely division of this "century" may prove to be a useful tool of periodization after all.


Broadly speaking, an overview of Ming history begins with the impressive achievements of the founding generation, whose political and military successes were accompanied by cultural and literary accomplishments of the first order, followed by a period of retrenchment during much of the fifteenth century. Then the pace begins to pick up again in the final decades of that century, bringing us into a period of remarkable flowering right up to the generation of the fall of the dynasty. Of course, one might well assume that this apparent slackening of the rate of achievement in the fifteenth century is nothing more than an optical illusion, attributable to the shifting sands of reputation and taste and the selective preservation of evidence. But there is a widespread perception, on the part of both observers of that time and modern historians, that fresh winds were blowing in practically every field of endeavor for much of the sixteenth century, so that even certain trends that had been gradually taking shape over a much longer period of time now take on the aspect of striking new developments. In the following pages, I will review some of the scholarly opinion on these historical trends, with an eye toward those points that can later be brought to bear on my interpretations of the four masterworks themselves.

First, let us consider the political climate of the period, as manifest in the court intrigues and military affairs that make up the central focus of most traditional and modern historical accounts of the dynasty. In terms of the overall span of the Ming state, what we are talking about is roughly the last half of the dynasty, which reached its arithmetical midpoint around the year 1500. The scenario of a dynamic revival of creativity at this point, gradually giving way to internal contradictions that leave the state more vulnerable than ever to challenges from within and without, is an oversimplified picture that readily conforms not only to the restoration phase of traditional dynastic cycle theories, but also to certain models in modern political theory regarding the rise and fall of empires. When we come to look for the specific factors responsible for this failed "restoration," however, the situation, as expected, turns out to be far more complex.

On the surface, these hundred years were, relatively speaking, an age of peace and security. To be sure, the nominally swollen forces of the paper military establishment were kept busy dealing with a variety of external enemies. Chief among these were the Mongols to the north, who had been pushed back into the steppe in the earlier campaigns of the dynasty's founder and the Yung-lo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] emperor but never entirely subdued (as witnessed in the T'u-mu debacle [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] in 1449), and the coastal pirates (wo-k'ou [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), who preyed upon the southeastern littoral and succeeded in occupying sizable chunks of inland territory. Both of these fronts remained "hot" for much of the century. The steppe forces continued their harassment and scored some notable victories, most spectacularly when a Mongol raiding party reached the gates of Peking in 1550; in the other direction, the wo-k'ou depredations managed to tie up some of the best government commanders for decades. Still, the Ming military somehow managed to keep an unsteady grip on the situation, showing considerable staying power in spite of the serious deterioration of its logistic base due to the erosion of its fiscal and command structure.

Even late in the century, the government was still able to field credible enough forces to stage what came to be called, with a certain measure of poetic license, the "three great campaigns," although in doing so it also depleted the imperial treasuries beyond recovery. By late Wan-li, the hindsight of history clearly bears witness to the rising power of the new military threat in the northeast; but through the 1620s and 1630s the handwriting was not yet on the wall. Thus, between the T'u-mu debacle, which marked the midpoint of the fifteenth century, and the Manchu conquest halfway through the seventeenth, the Ming forces were able to hold their own with little sense of a global crisis. The same may be said with respect to internal security, since, after the suppression of the Chu Ch'en-hao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (Ning-wang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) rebellion of 1519–20, no serious military challenge of national proportions — other than local mutinies, riots, and other disturbances — threatened the state for a good hundred years, right up to the final decades of the dynasty.

Something more on the order of a "crisis" does appear, however, on the home front. The series of critical issues that rocked the court and paralyzed the administration for extended periods of time were in many instances largely matters of individual rivalries and the normal political intrigues of government officials fighting for professional and personal survival. But in the bitter wrangling over certain issues, the endemic infighting comes out as a testing of the limits of institutional power in the Ming polity.

To be sure, few of the broader issues underlying these specific areas of contention were actually new. Such problems as factionalism based on regional, generational, and ideological ties; succession disputes threatening the continuity of dynastic rule; delegation of excessive authority to eunuch officers loyal directly to the throne; battles over institutional jurisdiction between the "outer court" and the "inner court," or between censorial and ministerial control — these problems had perennially plagued many of China's dynastic regimes. Yet it is precisely in this period that some of the same issues begin to take on the dimensions of what has been described as a full-blown "constitutional crisis."

It is significant that both the Chia-ching [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1522–66) and the Wan-li emperors, whose uncommonly long reigns stretch over the greater part of the century, were self-willed and stubborn men, and in this they follow in the footsteps of the Cheng-te [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] emperor (1506–21), whose escapades were already legendary by this time. Each of the these two rulers went through earlier phases in which they attempted to assert their independence as rulers and break away from the stranglehold of entrenched political forces, only to eventually withdraw from the arena of court politics entirely for unconscionably long periods of time, leaving the exercise of statecraft in the hands of self-serving power brokers.

This range of radical swings, from willful personal control to cynical disregard, reflects the basic contradictions in the system: between theoretically absolute and in fact often brutal despotism on the one hand — most concretely manifested in the corporal punishment meted out in full court — and a kind of laissez-faire attitude in certain areas of government policy. It is probably not very accurate to credit either of these reigns with "benign neglect," as one scholar has suggested, since they were not really all that benign. But the institutional neglect was very palpable, most obviously in such matters as fiscal irresponsibility, failure to make appointments to administrative posts, and cultivation of special interest groups at the expense of alienating large numbers of scholar-officials.

This breakdown in the system worked in two contradictory directions. On the one hand, it gave rise to much confusion and demoralization; on the other, it also led to the opening of certain windows of opportunity for the exercise of individual initiative. For the most part these cracks in the system were filled by the assertive action of a small number of strongmen, numbering among them constructive statesmen such as Hsia Yen [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Chang Chü-cheng [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and obstructionist politicians such as Yen Sung [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. They also allowed a chain of powerful eunuchs leading from Liu Chin [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. to Feng Pao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and later Wei Chung-hsien [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] to wield significant power over the administration at certain points. For the bulk of those in official service, however, the simultaneous presentation of both possibilities for concerted action, in conformity with the imperatives of Confucian ideology, and the all-too-real prospect of the terrifying consequences of a wrong move or alliance, resulted in a rather heady atmosphere — going beyond the earlier forms of bureaucratic resistance in the direction of something as close to political consciousness as was perhaps possible within the imperial order. To say that the gradual relaxation of central authority after the crushing autocracy of the Hung-wu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and Yung-lo reigns, and before the final traumas of repression and Manchu conquest, may have contributed to an unleashing of creative energies would of course be an oversimplification, but not without a measure of truth. At the least, this may help to account for the age of cultural flowering that gets under way after the slump of the mid-fifteenth century and picks up speed around the turn of the sixteenth.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel by Andrew H. Plaks. Copyright © 1987 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

  • Frontmatter, pg. i
  • Contents, pg. vii
  • Preface, pg. ix
  • Reader’s Note, pg. xiv
  • Chapter 1. The Literati Novel: Historical Background, pg. 1
  • CHAPTER 2. Chin P'ing Mei: Inversion of Self-cultivation, pg. 55
  • CHAPTER 3. Hsi-yu chi: Transcendence of Emptiness, pg. 183
  • CHAPTER 4. Shui-hu chuan: Deflation of Heroism, pg. 279
  • CHAPTER 5. San-kuo chih yen-i: Limitations of Valor, pg. 361
  • CHAPTER 6. Neo-Confucian Interpretations of the Four Masterworks, pg. 497
  • APPENDIX. The "Li Cho-wu" Commentary Editions, pg. 513
  • Bibliography, pg. 519
  • Index, pg. 575
  • Backmatter, pg. 597



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